Your BFG 9000 is Low on Ink: Playing Doom on a Canon Pixma Printer

UK security expert gets everyone’s favorite 90’s shooter running on a Canon printer.

Another day, another instance of Doom running on virtually anything with a microchip.

We recently saw Doom running on a hacked ATM. This time around? A UK-based security expert has gotten Doom running on a very pedestrian Canon Pixma printer.

Over the course of four months, Michael Jordon (no, not Jordan), got Doom running on a printer you very well might have humming along in your home office. The objective: to show how Pixma printers could be forced to run custom code sent over an Internet connection.

Like most of the consumer printers up for purchase today, the Pixma line of all-in-one devices have built-in LCD displays, WiFi, Ethernet, and can update software from the Internet (like all those firmware updates you’re being pinged about every week, no doubt). Jordon wanted to show how a hacker could, given the right circumstances, use the printer as a gateway into someone’s private network.

Jordon contacted Canon about the vulnerability in its firmware update processes months ago, and the company is implementing fixes for any Pixma model printer sold since Summer 2013. Now that the hole has been plugged, Jordon was able to show his Cyberdemon-fueled escapades to the world. You can read his full breakdown of the encryption hack here.

Additional Source: Wired